The new Win 10 NVIDIA GeForce driver is here, in two different flavours depending on your form factor. If you spend the money for a gaming laptop with a GeForce 600M through 900M then this is the driver for you. On the other hand if you have a traditional desktop and a GPU or two then head to this page.

If you have a Sony laptop you should double check your GPU is covered and unfortunately at this point Hybrid Power technology is not supported. NVIDIA did not provide much additional information on the desktop side; it is a beta and so is the OS so make sure to record the full information about your bugs and crashes when reporting them, not just a frowny face followed by expletives.

A new Catalyst Release Candidate has arrived and as with the previous driver it no longer supports Windows 8.0 or the WDDM 1.2 driver, so upgrade to Win 7 or Win 8.1 before installing please. AMD will eventually release a driver which supports WDDM 1.1 under Win 8.0 for those who do not upgrade.

Feature Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 14.7​ RC3 Driver for Windows Includes all improvements found in the AMD Catalyst 14.7 RC driver

Even with these improvements, cable quality and other system variables can affect 4k performance. AMD recommends using DisplayPort 1.2 HBR2 certified cables with a length of 2m (~6 ft) or less when driving 4K monitors.​

Wildstar: AMD Crossfire profile support

Lichdom: Single GPU and Multi-GPU performance enhancements

Watch Dogs: Smoother gameplay on single GPU and Multi-GPU configurations​

A software workaround has been implemented in AMD Catalyst 14.7 RC driver to resolve the display timing issues with this display. Users are further encouraged to obtain newer display firmware from AOC that will resolve flickering at its origin.

Users are additionally advised to utilize DisplayPort-certified cables to ensure the integrity of the DisplayPort data connection.​​​

Starting with AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta, AMD will no longer support Windows 8.0 (and the WDDM 1.2 driver) so Windows 8.0 users should upgrade to Windows 8.1, AMD Catalyst 14.4 will continue to work on Windows 8.0.

The WDDM 1.1 Windows 7 driver currently works on Win 7 and in a future release will be used to install updated drivers under Windows 8.0.

Note: The signup page is a bit glitchy, likely because of server load. If you are interested, hop in quick, before all of the slots are gone. The beta is open now, although it apparently takes a little bit of time before Origin recognizes that you are in it. You will know you are in when you get an email "invoice" for the Battlefield Hardline beta with a $0 transaction.

Yes, you too can now benefit from the Frame Pacing which Ryan has been testing and posted the results to. For anyone with a multi-GPU system using Radeon cards this is an update worth installing as you will see a significant benefit to your gaming experience, along with the other benefits that the new Catalyst offers.

Highlights of the Windows AMD Catalyst™ 13.8 Beta release:

Support for CrossFire Frame Pacing

Frame Pacing ensures that frames rendered across multiple GPUs in a CrossFire configuration will be displayed at an even and regular pace

Enabled through the AMD Catalyst Control Center; Globally or on a per application basis

Supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications and resolutions up and including 2560x1600 (single display)

OpenGL 4.3 support – full support for the OpenGL 4.3 feature set

Performance improvements found in AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta:

Metro Last Light – Improves performance up to 7% on the AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series

OpenGL support for User Profiles and Catalyst Application Profiles:

Users can now create per application 3D setting profiles for OpenGL applications

AMD has released its Catalyst 13.6 beta graphics driver, and it fixes a number of issues under both Windows 8 and Linux. The new beta driver is also compatible with the existing Catalyst 13.5 CAP1 (Catalyst Application Profile) which improves performance of several PC games.

As far as the Windows version of the graphics driver, Catalyst 13.6 adds OpenCL GPU acceleration support to Adobe's Premiere Pro CC software and enables AMD Wireless Display technology on systems with the company's A-Series APUs and either Broadcom or Atheros Wi-Fi chipsets. AMD has also made a couple of tweaks to its Enduro technology, including correctly identifying when a Metro app idles and offloading the corresponding GPU tasks to integrated graphics instead of a discrete card. The new beta driver also resolves an issue with audio dropout over HDMI.

On the Linux side of things, Catalyst 13.6 beta adds support for the following when using AMD's A10, A8, A6, and A4 APUs:

Ubuntu 13.04

Xserver 1.14

GLX_EXT_buffer age

The driver fixes several bugs as well, including resolving black screen and corruption issues under TF2, an issue with OpenGL applications and VSYNC, and UVD playback issues where the taskbar would disappear and/or the system would experience a noticeable performance drop while playing a UVD in XBMC.

Users of Valve’s Steam for Linux client will be getting access to the beta version of Left 4 Dead 2 later this week. The L4D2 beta will come with the new Enhanced Mutation System (EMS), which adds advanced scripting options to the multiplayer zombie survival game.

In fact, all Left 4 Dead owners will get access to the new beta release via the Steam client (not just the Linux platform) for free. The beta will appear in the all games list as a separate download from the main Left 4 Dead 2 game. It will allow beta players to connect to beta servers and other L4D2 beta users.

The EMS system is the biggest addition to the beta currently. It gives developers access to custom script logic as well as custom spawn points and control entities. New maps, characters, and weapons are beyond the scope of the EMS, however.

Interested gamers should keep an eye on their Steam games list as well as the Left 4 Dead blog.

Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN has information on how you can try to get into the Neverwinter beta which will take place in February and March. For those of you screaming "shut up and take my money", you can invest in a Founders Pack which apparently for those of you who can't make up your own character and have to pretend you are actually Salvatore's famous Drow. If you fork over your cash you will get swanky outfit, a pseudo-Guenhwyvar and strangely a giant spider mount which is just odd to ride above ground in daylight. Still, if that is your cuppa, head on over.

As well, it is likely we will be trying out the Crysis 3 Multiplayer open beta after the podcast tonight, so fire up Origin and download it if you want to join in on the action.

"I’ll retreat there, probably around February 8-10, March 8-10, and March 22-24, which is when Neverwinter‘s beta will take place. With its user-generated content and D&D trappings, it should be a healing sort of environment for discombobulated old nerd-wraiths like me. The more excitable among our kind – and those with wallets full of platinum – will like invest in Founders Packs, which are fashionable pre-order garments of the online-gaming catwalk. Or something."

When we first heard about the new SimCity we collectively swooned: it looked to be the best implementation possible for a SimCity game. Each subsequent information release made us slightly less warm to the upcoming game. While being honest about things that your users hate is better than surprising them at the end: best-case scenario would have been to provide the product we want.

The beta will run throughout this weekend, but that is not the only time constraint which beta testers will need to endure. So it turns out that all EA needs or wants from us in their beta test is a single hour of playtime. Consequentially, that will be all the time they will give us. That seems somewhat ludicrous to me given the time it will likely take to install and setup the game as well as the typical amount of time required to do anything meaningful with a traditional SimCity game.

Beyond that, the signup page is now closed with still several days to go until the beta opens. Yikes.

It is like EA is trying to drown its publicity to prove that PC-centric titles do not sell or something. Oh well, I will still probably be purchasing the title when it comes out March 5th -- but EA certainly does not respect the value of "Shut up and take my money".